Could Supercomputers Help Save the [US] Economy?

December 8, 2008 by

…only if they wear a flashy cape. Computerworld has an interesting speculative piece on improving the current US economic climate by improving the commercial accessibility to high performance computing equipment, thus enabling US companies to be more competitive. They cite several examples of fairly large supercomputing organizations partnering with private industry. One of the most obvious examples in the Ohio Supercomputing Center.

One such approach is being jointly tested by the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) in Columbus and the Edison Welding Institute, a nonprofit organization that does research and consulting work on welding processes and technologies.

Last fall, the Columbus-based EWI began a beta program that gives welding engineers at its client firms access to HPC capabilities via a Web-based user interface, with no programming required on their end. The engineers use a browser to input a wide range of data related to the joining of materials. The data is then run on a supercomputer at the OSC, and the engineers can view simulations that show how certain welds will work.

I would have to agree that partnerships between academic [HPC] organizations and private industry could be mutually beneficial, constructed correctly.

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